Stretching is a very important activity to maintain a person's health and proper body functions. Stretching before and after physical activity, such as working out or playing sports, will not only improve performance in that physical activity, but will help prevent injuries. Not only does stretching improve flexibility, range of motion and prevent injury, stretching increases blood flow, relieves stress, ensures correct posture, increases stamina, reduces muscle soreness, improves energy, and improves athletic performance. Additionally, performing stretches while standing provides further benefits, as you are engaging many muscles throughout your body. Benefits from performing stretching while standing include increased stability and balance, as well as muscle toning and strength increases.
One stretch in particular, bending at the waist to touch the toes, stretches the entire back of the body, especially the lower back and hamstrings, and can strengthen the thighs, knees and core. Bending at the waist to touch the toes is prevalent in activities that involve stretching, such as yoga, and many informally measure a person's flexibility by their ability to touch their toes. In light of this, many people would like to touch their toes, but cannot and require assistance to deepen their ability to stretch and ultimately touch their toes.
Devices exist to assist people in achieving deeper stretches. Information regarding relevant attempts to address these problems can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,634,995, 8,251,880, 6,656,094, 7,841,973, 8,622,880, 5,984,845, 7,309,305 and 8,092,354 and U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 11/874,754 and 12/653,151. However, each one of these references suffers from one or more of the following disadvantages: (1) the device does not target the specific stretch of bending at the waist and touching the toes; (2) the device is not simple to use, (3) the device is not able to be set up easily and quickly; (4) the device is overly bulky, heavy and hard to transport; (5) the device is not able to be stored safely and easily; (6) the device uses electricity: or (7) the device is not self-contained.
As a result, there exists a need for improvements over the prior art and more particularly for a safe, simple, space-saving, easily accessible, easily movable, easily storable, non-electric apparatus for performing this type of stretching.